Okay. This could get bristly.
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The New York Review of Books has a fine look at the "new populism", which might be better classified as the New Libertarian Nihilism:
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The Times has a piece on breaking silence about poverty in Japan:

After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly egalitarian nation is belatedly waking up to the fact that it has a large and growing number of poor people. The Labor Ministry’s disclosure in October that almost one in six Japanese, or 20 ( Read more... )

Jim Hines has linked to a rather grim story about a woman who was sexually assaulted by someone she met at a convention. The response she gave (and the support she's received) are heartening, and I'm hoping she'll be able to go back to that particular show without feeling like she's sticking her hand into a wasp's nest.

And a question did arise in ( Read more... )

First off. Ebert, as usual, nails it.

The gathering storm - Roger Ebert's Journal
We need to pull in our belts, pay more taxes, demand more value for our taxes, and say no to an ideology that requires converting our health money into corporate profits. We should to raise the lowest wages, and lower the highest ones. We have to return to the saying ( Read more... )

Funny how one train of thought produces another. First, the quote.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Power Elite - NYTimes.com

... society is too transparent. Since Watergate, we have tried to make government as open as possible. But as William Galston of the Brookings Institution jokes, government should sometimes be shrouded for the same reason that ( Read more... )

From Scott Green's current AICN Anime installment:

My concept of "bookshelf manga" has never caught on, but that's not going to stop me from evangelizing it. Most manga is written as disposable entertainment, and doesn't transcend that. Even for a compelling title like Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE or Fullmetal Alchemist, to name a couple of best ( Read more... )

Lester Bangs, again:

If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other's objects of reverence.


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Another odd bit of news about that cancelled GLBT zombie anthology:

Based on his words and the editor’s first statement, this anthology was pulled for fear of people’s reaction. (The editor now says there were concerns the anthology would be seen as a gimmick, and that it wouldn’t have good stories.) ... Whatever his personal views on ( Read more... )

Courtesy of Jim Hines:

...last month, Library of the Living Dead Press put out a call for an LGBT zombie anthology (which sounds like a very cool project, actually).  Yesterday, the publisher pulled the plug on the anthology.  From the editor:

“It is with deep regret that I must inform you that the publisher has pulled the plug on this anthology ( Read more... )